The Teradata Unified Data Architecture enables business users to ask any question, against any data, with any analytic, at any time. (PRNewsFoto/Teradata Corporation)
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Teradata Corporation logo. (PRNewsFoto/Teradata Corporation)

The Teradata Unified Data Architecture enables business users to ask any question, against any data, with any analytic, at any time. (PRNewsFoto/Teradata Corporation)

WASHINGTON, Oct. 22, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Teradata (NYSE: TDC), the leading analytic data solutions company, today introduced Teradata® Unified Data Environment™ and the Unified Data Architecture™. The Teradata Unified Data Environment is a framework for organizations to address all types of data and multiple Teradata systems. The Teradata Unified Data Architecture leverages the complementary value of best-in-class technologies from Teradata, Teradata Aster, and open source Apache™ Hadoop, to enable business users to ask any question, against any data, with any analytic, at any time.Today's announcement includesnew software - Teradata Viewpoint, Teradata Connector, and Teradata Vital Infrastructure, and new hardware - Teradata Data Warehouse Appliance 2700 and the recently announced Teradata Aster Big Analytics Appliance. Utilizing the Teradata Unified Data Architecture, organizations can now deploy, support, manage, and seamlessly access all their data in an integrated and dynamic Teradata Unified Environment. Teradata's integration of these technologies creates value, which is more than the sum of the individual components.

Organizations face obstacles in building effective unified environments, because these environments are difficult to deploy, and hard to manage with new types of data and multiple systems. Providing access to timely business insights is problematic. To respond to this need, Teradata has introduced the Teradata Unified Data Architecture that brings together multiple technologies including Aster SQL-MapReduce®, Aster SQL-H™ and best-of-breed partner tools into a cohesive and transparent architecture. The environment is supported, optimized, architected, and delivered by new and existing Teradata, Teradata Aster, and Hadoop technology. The easy access to these powerful technologies further enables customers to discover big data insights.

"As ApacheHadoop moves from early adopters to the main stream, organizations require enterprise-class, unified system management and the ability to tightly integrate with their existing analytical tools to ensure success," said Rob Bearden, chief executive officer, Hortonworks. "The combination of Teradata's world-class data management and analytics capabilities, with the unmatched reliability of Hortonworks Data Platform, provides a truly unified, high-performance big data analytics architecture for the enterprise."

New, Key Software Enablers
To ensure that the Teradata Unified Data Architecture can be easily supported and managed, Teradata introduced new software enablers.

Teradata Viewpoint is a web-based interface for system management and monitoring that now makes Teradata and Teradata Aster databases easier to manage. The same support for manageability will be available for Hadoop in early 2013. Teradata Viewpoint is a single interface allowing IT professionals to manage and monitor the entire Teradata Unified Data Architecture. It offers a comprehensive suite of portlets that monitor multiple systems, while offering useful and actionable monitoring and management information to all users.

Teradata Connector for Hadoop supports Hortonworks and Cloudera. The new data connector allows for the transparent, seamless movement of data in and out of Hadoop, where it can be stored and refined. Customers will now have a choice between the two leading commercial distributions of Hadoop - Hortonworks and Cloudera.

Teradata Vital Infrastructure manages the entire Teradata Unified Data Architecture and provides new support capabilities for Teradata Aster Database and Hadoop. The Teradata Vital Infrastructure ensures reliability by proactively monitoring events, and identifying risks and system faults. It can discover up to 70 percent of the incidents before the customer does, which is especially important with managing a Hadoop infrastructure. It automatically sends alerts to Teradata Customer Service representatives, who then take appropriate action.

Quick and Easy Deployment
The Teradata Unified Data Architecture helps customers manage and analyze large volumes of complex data. Within the Teradata Unified Data Architecture, Teradata will deliver two workload-specific appliances to make analytics simpler, faster, and more cost effective to deploy.

Teradata Data Warehouse Appliance 2700 – To make it easier to extract value from data, the Teradata Data Warehouse Appliance 2700 delivers up to two times the performance and up to four times higher data loading performance of the previous version. The Teradata Data Warehouse Appliance is a powerful, integrated appliance designed to optimize the Teradata Database, multi-core Intel processors, compression engines, enterprise-class disk drives, and the storage subsystem to deliver high performance analytics. Set-up is not required; this analytic powerhouse comes ready to run. It can be configured from seven terabytes (TB) up to 82TB of uncompressed user data per cabinet. The appliance will be available by the end of first quarter 2013.

Teradata Aster Big Analytics Appliance - The Teradata Aster Big Analytics Appliance is the industry's first to provide the fastest path from diverse big data to big insights. This appliance provides the ability to combine Teradata Aster and Hadoop servers in a single integrated and optimized cabinet. Unlike other appliances in the market, which require specialists and separate interfaces to access and analyze data in Hadoop, the new Aster appliance provides a truly enterprise ready solution. This platform integrates the Aster Database, Aster SQL-MapReduce, and ApacheHadoopdistributed by Hortonworks,all within a single interface to manage and analyze structured, unstructured, and multi-structured data. It can be configured to store a maximum of five petabytes of uncompressed user data for Aster and up to 10 petabytes of uncompressed user data for Hadoop. The new appliance is available now.

"Big data is not about getting new technology. It's not about using old technology. Big data is about figuring out how to create a common set of instructions and semantics to manage disparate engineering solutions, old and new, as if they are one environment—it is the new normal," said Mark Beyer, research vice president, Gartner.

There are many industry examples that demonstrate how integration of these technologies makes the sum of the parts more valuable than any individual part. For example, industries as diverse as healthcare, communications, retail, and financial services know that as they try to harness value from their customer data they are faced with multiple system decisions to address various data types. By integrating customer behavior data across all channels including; in-branch or store visits, use of the call center, raw web log data, and online transactions, companies can have a complete view at a detailed level. For example, the discovery of the behavior patterns that lead to customer defection can be used as the bases for action to retain profitable customers. The real benefit comes when the data from all sources is combined for analysis and a clear picture emerges of which customers are profitable, their likely risk of defection and the appropriate action to take to retain them. This is all possible today with the Teradata Unified Data Architecture, which captures, refines, and stores detailed data in Hadoop. Subsequent analysis can then be performed for the discovery of new insights by Teradata Aster. And then, the resulting intelligence is made available by the Teradata Database for use across the enterprise.

"The Teradata Unified Data Architecture becomes the new normal, because its value to organizations is more than the sum of the individual technologies," said Scott Gnau, president, Teradata Labs. "The Teradata Unified Data Architecture, with best-in-class technology, provides business users fast and seamless answers to their questions regardless of the type of data analyzed."

Customized Consulting Services
Teradata Consulting Services support customers as they seek the best way to unify and build a sustainable analytics environment. Using best practices from around the world, Teradata Consulting addresses the information, application, and systems components that are needed to design an effective data warehouse architecture to meet an organization's business needs. The result is a custom solution architected specifically for the organization, which enables them to gain the greatest value from traditional and new data types. Within the Teradata Unified Data Architecture, Teradata is the first company to unify all forms of data into an architecture that enables business insights from across the enterprise. Teradata Consulting Services has more than 25 years of global experience in software and consulting engagements.